Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

Looking back, my old man would have been a perfect GIMer.
This was back in the 70's.When I was in grade school he uprooted the entire family from a comfortable suburb to the middle of nowhere. It was a 50 year old dilapidated homestead with about 30 acres on a dirt road. The family (or at least, he and I) spent the next 12 years building a working farm out of it.
I was hauling brush and wood at the age of 9 and driving tractors at the age of 12. We cleared overgrown pastures, hauled hay, strung barbwire, built a barn, a new house, 2 farm ponds and kept 2 gardens. My best friends were my .22 and my fishing pole. Not necessarily out of choice, I just didn't care much for the nearest neighbor kids about a mile away. We raised beef cattle and the occasional hog. Cutting the grass meant hooking up the bush hog to the tractor. We had a generator that ran off the PTO drive on the tractor and a 500 gallon drum filled with diesel to run the tractor. Looking back I see we had the perfect bugout place. Besides the obligatory Farmer's Almanac, I also recall seeing an obscure little newsletter some may be familiar with called The Spotlight. It was full of interesting new terms to me like Trilateral Commission, The Illuminati, The Rothschilds, etc. I also remember seeing/reading Howard Ruff's How to Prosper in the Coming Bad Years which first appeared in print then. I remember article after article warning the reader to buy gold and silver - I think silver was flatlined at around $4 an ounce at the time. Cars and Girls were much more exciting to me. So it seems very prophetic in a way, I give my old man credit, he was just 30 years ahead of his time. There are lessons here, I find I am still learning. So that's my story, anyone have one they care to share?

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

yes mine were preppers, but i didn't realize it at the time...they homesteaded in alaska in 1959. got the land for "free" but had to prove up on it to get title to the property which entailed clearing a portion of the land, building a structure to live in and actually living there.

we got electricity and indoor plumbing, running water in 1968...till then it was my job to fill up water jugs from the river...fill up the coleman lantern for light with fuel...

we grew a garden, ate moose we shot on the property, berries picked nearby, lots of salmon we fished for out of the river, dug clams on the beach, hunted grouse in the woods...it was wonderful and i'm grateful to have lived that life...

though i realize it may seem like living in poverty, it was rich in experience and we were all close...

every 3 months we would take the long trek into Anchorage to stock up on other groceries like milkman powder and staples...no refrigeration so milkman was all we had...occasional real milk was a luxury, but i seem to remember mom cutting it with milkman to make it last a little longer...

i tell ya that old van was full coming back home from the big city cause it had to last a while...
......

people need much less than they think they do...

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

No, just pack-rats. Both grew up during the Depression.

s

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

My grandparents were preppers and stackers for sure.

My parents, No so much

Although my dad did have some silver stashed

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

My mother is about as far from being a prepper as I can imagine, and I hope she realizes soon that she can't keep living beyond her means buying useless, expensive junk. Some of you may have seen this thread:

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=427370

Anyone have parents who have/are waking up late in life to realize the need to prep?

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

No........

But they were damned thrifty,

And always stocked up when they could.

So, here's an open question.

What is the difference (if any) between

Being thrifty and prepping?


scyth

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

I'll bite on that.... being a Scottish tycoon and all!!! :emotions16:

Being "thrifty" means you always keep an eye on opportunites to buy what you want or need when the "price is right," even if it means waiting for a sale or whatever. It also means avoiding wasting what you have, and trying to get the most use of what you have. It's also a sort of day-to-day lifestyle... not something you plan, just how you live.

Being a "prepper" means looking into the future (months, years) and deciding to anticipate being able to handle a worst-case-scenario should it happen. With that attitude, the cheapest price isn't always a factor. In fact, you might be willing to pay a premium for the sake of "future security."

You can be a prepper who wastes his money and resources; and you can be thrifty and clueless and helpless if/when disaster strikes.

They're two different things, though you sometimes find both qualities in one person.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! :favorites8:

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

My mother was a prepper, not fearing government, but rather what life could throw our way. There were many times that her diligence saved the family from considerable hardship, yet we still experienced our share. Her views behind prepping have changed. She still preps, but now understands how society is rigged to blow.

My father was not a prepper at all. Today, he still trusts banks, government, and the like. He tells me what a great man Obama is, and believes Bernanke has a soft spot for the little guy. He couldn't survive more than a week on his stash and he's never had anything of merit in his past.

I'm proud to take after mama.

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

My father passed away in the early 80's, but Mom is still alive, kickin', and generally raising hell. She was born in early 1927, was not-quite-three when The Crash and the banking collapse wiped out her family financially. Luckily, her grandparents owned a large home, which came in handy as the older kids started coming back home (often with their own children in tow.) A year after the crash her grandfather (Pa), the family patriarch, died of cancer, leaving Ma with seven teens-to-twenties kids (the oldest of whom was mentally retarded), a few in-laws, and three grandkids to feed and house. And Ma never once turned away either a friend or a stranger who needed a meal or a chunk of floor to sleep on. Helping each other, one-for-all-and-all-for-one, was how they survived, yet Mom never knew she'd been poor or that times were hard until she was a grown woman. Love and laughter had been a rich way of life; family was everything. Still, by the time the Depression was over, the rationing and hardships of the War years was past, and the post-war recession of the fifties had faded she was thirty years old and her experiences had shaped her personality and mindset.

She doesn't trust banks, politicians, government, or big business. She feels safest when the pantry is filled to overflowing. She doesn't waste anything. She'd rather call a friend for help with the plumbing or car rather than calling a repairman. She can't say no to someone in need. She has precious metals and stockpiles, she has the foresight to see what's coming, and experience enough to understand that the time is coming again when families/tribes will either pull together or perish individually. Most importantly (I think) is that she possesses the wisdom to know that in the long run what will matter is not how much gold or money you had, not how well you survived, nor how much better you ate or dressed than the guy down the street. The things that will really matter will be the things that don't show; the things that you carry away from the experience; the things that outlast the hard times. Love. Hope. Caring. Kindness. Belonging. Courtesy. Charity. Self-respect. Honor. laughter. Family bonds. A sense of community. And nurturing the young to the extent that they turn 30 before they realize that they were poor and times were hard.

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

Yes and no.

There were four of us kids, plus my folks. My mom stayed at home. My dad was a salesman. He did OK. We never starved or anything.

My dad was always railing about those damned REDS or stinking COMMIES. At the time, being a teenager, I kinda let it all just roll off me. But I did listen to what he was saying and that was WAY back in the early sixties.

I think I've turned into my DAD. I'm CONSTANTLY RAILING about Obama being a Marxist, a communist and a MOSLEM for the past three years, even before he broke on the national scene.

But my parents LISTENED to what I have been saying all these years about how things were going bad, key things to look for, etc. Their pantry is excellent now. My dad has been wanting to purchase a small .22 pistol, but my mom is so afraid of them, she won't allow it. Given my Dad turns 86 in February and hasn't shot a weapon since WWII, I figure my Dad's gonna lose this battle. But, as my sister and her family are where my parents will bug out to and his whole family, including my nephew are all hunters. SO that's not as big a deal as it could be.

Plus I've extracted a promise from my BIL that he will roll his Ford F350 crewcab pickup truck to their house, so they can bring with them any valuables (pix, etc), clothes and off course, THE PANTRY. Then off to the ranch they will all go. They will probably also drive BOTH their large cars (Crown Vic and a Lincoln Towncar) out to the ranch as well.

They live in West Texas, where it's drier than it is here in Denver, so water would be a concern, but the ranch has several wells and the ranch houses (three I think) are all on their own septic systems. So they can (and have) had large groups of people at the ranch over any given holiday.

To give the overall summary, I LEARNED about the Bilderburgers, Trilateral Commission, et al listening to my Dad more than forty years ago. If I live to be HALF the man he is, I can die happy. Since the last election I've had a LOT of folks who have called me 'crazy' starting to contact me and go somthing like, "Didn't you say something about being prepared? What do I need to do? Where do I start?"

I have now helped for than five families get started with their preps. Showing them HOW to shop the sales, how to store food properly. WHY you only buy things you actually eat. Things like that. Once we get the food, water and shelter covered, then we move on into firearms, vehicles, comm, etc...

GREAT THREAD BTW.

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

My step-father was a closet prepper, I discovered this after he passed away.
While helping mom empty out the upstairs storage area above the garage there was a full 55 gal. of gas from the 70s.
Stored in the home was 2 SKSs with 1k of ammo, 1 45 Colt and a 9mm.
The basement cupboard was full of old C-rations.

I had to ask; "Mom do you realize what dad was really up to with this stuff?"
He was very soft spoken and never mentioned his little stash.

Re: Were/are your parents Preppers?
 

My parents are both clueless. My grandparents were less clueless and were more packrats than preppers. But they did grow up on farms in the depression, so they did at least know how to process and can fruits and veggies. My grandpa never threw anything away. He was one of the biggest (worst?) packrats I've ever seen.

A great anecdote is the one time I bought him a new garden hose because every single hose he had was half rotted and patched with duct tape in at least 5 places. After he died, I found the brand new hose still in package hanging in the garage! Around the same time I was cleaning out their pantry so the house could be sold, and there were cans of food from the 70s in there, no joke. (this was around year 2000)